leclairfoundation wrote:
Generally, depopulating will make you more money
To be clear, depopulating any boards is a complex issue and Boardsort generally discourages depopulation. Some categories on the price list are even labeled as over processed to let you know, it's not worth it. There are instances where other forum members have even done the work to weigh material before and after depopulation to get the values and end up with less money because the thing they took off was the thing making the larger board worth more.
That's not to say there's no case for depopulating, there are also members who have shared when to depopulate and how much to remove. If I remember correctly, Lostinlodos likes to depopulate the lowest grade boards and has methods to quickly remove all the components in a short amount of time. Then, I believe, he has buyers besides just Boardsort that he's able to get the most for all the different materials.
As far as these 3 boards I'm thinking high peripheral as is. I don't think think the large board will be affected by removing the pins as the gold plating is minimal. The two smaller ones, the gold appears to be on the entire pin and if you remove those I think you're looking at a possible drop to low peripheral and I don't know if you'd recover the better grade by removing anything else.
